Monthly Archives: June 2014

His Runaway Royal Bride, Tanu Jain’s second book, is another royal book based on royal characters, Meethi and Veer.

Nineteen year old Meethi meets Maharaj Vidyamaan Veer Singh of Samogpur, nine years her senior, in a typical Bollywood style- she saves a pup from being run down by his car. They meet again at a wedding and he asks for her hand in marriage. She does not want to get married because she wants to pursue her degree in art for which she has won an art fellowship in London. He convinces her that he would let her study after marriage and they get married in temple. The elders of the family keep taunting her about her family background and she cannot do anything about it because Veer does not believe her. Her confidante in the family is Veer’s cousin, Harshvardhan. Three years into her marriage and a miscarriage later, she runs away to her Guruji, because she has nowhere else to go, feigning her death. She thought that running away would set them both free.

Three years later, Veer locates Meethi, after discovering that she was alive and moving heaven and earth to find her, and brings her back. Being a stickler for family traditions, he feels that she has tarnished the family name and honour and shamed her father’s memory and wants to know why she ran away, but she is not ready to tell. He feels that she has betrayed him by feigning death and she feels he was relieved at getting rid of her.

Will he know the truth or will he still not believe her?

My take:

A very well written story. I loved the part when Veer comes to know that Meethi is alive. The characters have been described well and so have their feelings. Loved the book. Well done, Tanu!

The cover has been thoughtfully designed keeping Meethi in mind. A good job done:

We’re extremely excited about it. You will be too…when you hear the details. Get ready to be blown away by Tornado Giveaway!

A tornado of books is coming your way. We love our Authors. They give us hours of entertainment; they fill our lives with love and passion. Today, we want to do exactly that. Fill your life with love. This is a Romance Giveaway with a smattering of crime thrillers and a heartwarming family saga – to spice up your life.

Starting on the 1st of July we will introduce each of the twenty-three participating Authors on our Book Club page. Some you already know; some are new. But all promise to keep you entertained with their words.

Believe it or not, we have 200 books to give away. Didn’t we say, a Tornado is coming your way! And there will be not one… nottwo … but 17 Winners who will get 17 books each and 6 Mega winners will get a chance to grab 22 books each.

How do you participate in this Giveaway? It’s simple… just follow the Rafflecopter(scroll down) and win all the books.

So what are you waiting for? Join us here as we introduce each author daily and get a sneak peek into their writing. Get ready to be swept away!

The Rules….

Love Books of course 🙂

In the Rafflecopter follow the rules….

1. Like the Author Facebook Page – Mandatory – 1 point

2. Follow the author on Twitter -Mandatory- 2 points

3. Tweet on the dates mentioned in the Rafflecopter about the Author – Optional – 3 points

Sweet Sixteen (Yeah, Right!) by Vibha Batra is the first book in the Rinki Tripathi Trilogy. I am thankful to the author for sending me the book. It is the story of sixteen year old Rinki Tripathi who moves from Delhi to Chennai with her parents on her father’s transfer.

The Blurb:

From Oye to Aiyyo, from dahi bhallas to bissi bella, from rajma to rasam, watch Rinki’s life take one big 360 degree skid
Vannakam. It’s the summer of 2011 and sixteen-year-old Rinki Tripathi has just been sentenced to a life in Chennai. She is supposed to say goodbye to her BFF, her beloved hometown Dilli, basically her whole life.
Surd jokes must step aside for Rajni forwards, parandis must make way for mallipoo, Delhi Daredevils must go down fighting Chennai Super Kings.
Guess what else heads south? Her grades. The princy wants to see more of her parents, her mom wants to see more of kanjivarams and her dad doesn’t want to be seen at all. Then there is the school hottie, Tejas, who is making her decidedly hot under the collar. Shiva shiva. How is a girl supposed to cope with all this madness? Read on to find out. Just don’t ditch Rinki midway. Mind it!

The story:

Rinki Tripathi’s father breaks the news to Rinki and her mother that his bank has transferred him to Chennai and that they should start packing. Her mother recovers after being upset initially but Rinki needs time to recover from the shock. Her friends make it worse by comparing Delhi and Chennai. Rinki loves music and makes a playlist reflecting her mood.

Finally, they move and are in a new place, with a new language, new neighbourhood, new school and new friends. And the teething problems set in. She does not like commerce, prefers extra-curricular activities and her grades start dropping. She finds everything but studies awesome. To make matters worse she has a crush on Tejas.

My take:

The book has been written in first person from Rinki’s perspective. The chapters start with a Facebook status update giving an idea of what follows. The idea of the playlist is unique and I loved it. The book is fast paced and very hilarious at times. The author has really captured the moments and added appropriate comments. I really loved the comment, “Mom leapt up like a golden slice from a toaster”. The pronunciations have been depicted well like okay as vokay, curd as karad and so on.

Overall, an enjoyable read. Thank you Vibha, once again for the book. Shall start reading ‘Seventeen and done’, the next book in the trilogy soon.

M & B, The fast fiction from Mills and Boon is a new initiative from Harlequin India and I have taken a liking to it. The book-a-zine, as they call it, is not very easily available in Delhi, I have to go as far as twenty kilometers to get it and miss some issues. The book-a-zine is a total of hundred odd pages, includes a short story by a famous mills and Boon author, monthly horoscope, some recipes and Romance news. What I like about the book-a-zine is the short story and the easy recipes.

The June issue has a story by Rebecca Winters, “For Better, For Worse”, the story of Kit Spring and Rafael de Mendez y Lucar.

Kit Spring teaches Maths and English at school at US Naval Military Base in Rota, Spain not far from Jerez where the Mendez estate is located. She meets Jamie through common friends and meets Rafael meet at a sherry party hosted by Jamie. Rafael’s roots go back to the Spanish Aristocracy and his family is one of the most important landowners in Andalusia and he runs the family business. Raf proposes marriage and Kit disappears because his mother tells her to stay away and she does not want to create a rift in the family. She runs away to Inkom, Idaho in the US where she was born and brought up. He tracks her down and meets with a freak accident on the way to the airport en route to Spain, where they are going to get married. Just before, he is wheeled in for the surgery, he marries her. When he regains consciousness, he loses his memory and doctors do not know when it would come back.

Read on….

A very well written novella. I loved the book as well as the characters a lot.

Looking forward to such book-a-zines in future and would love it if Harlequin India could create an annual subscription package.

Tia was in love with her career and her lifestyle in America. And she was madly in love with Hari. But where was the romance she craved? Simi was the young girl left behind in a small town in India who hadn’t seen her sister for years. She was a dreamer. But what did she really want out of life? And then there was Hari. Straight-forward and uncomplicated, it felt nothing he did was ever good enough for Tia. But didn’t every man want an ambitious and successful wife no matter how demanding they were?

Theirs was a love story that was never going to be conventional. But what happened to Hari and Tia was something that nobody would have predicted.

Mix two sisters with bad history between them and one clueless man, to form one whacky triangle, and you get a cautionary lesson in how you should be careful of what you such for in the name of love.

The characters:

Tia Galhotra, 25, works as an architect in an architectural firm in Los Angeles. She is from Nagpur, India and at 19, she secured a scholarship to UCLA to study architecture and she has never gone back to India ever since. She is a movie fanatic and loves rom-coms. She has made a bucket list of things to do before thirty and is in the process of checking them out one by one. She always wanted an American best friend and Jenny is her best friend.

Hari Prasad Malhotra, Hari, is the owner of a start-up designing games and applications for mobiles and tablets. Born and brought up in America, he belongs to a rich family of doctors. Chitthi is his lead designer and also his best friend. He has subscribed to trivia lists and he receives them on his phone all the time.

Simi Galhotra, 23, Tia’s younger sister works in a small travel agency in Nagpur, India. She lives with her mother. She knows different prayers for different situations. She likes watching American shows on television and The Practice is her favourite. Her best friend is Sharmila.

Tia and Simi do not have a huggy, sappy, touchy-feely kind of a relationship but they are close and speak to each other mostly by Skype.

The story:

Hari and Tia are getting engaged in a month’s time and married two months later. Tia is all out looking for a venue and the works and Hari gets bored. One day, Chitthi tells Hari about a business proposition in Hyderabad for which Hari has to travel to India. His family tells him to go to Nagpur and meet Tia’s mother and sister and invite them to the wedding. And Simi reaches the US. As the engagement date nears, Tia gets stressed out and on the day of the engagement, the story changes the track.

My take:

The story is simple and the flow is good. The story has been narrated in third person and moves back and forth between Nagpur and Los Angeles, the timeline is even mentioned, the chapters are very long but the respite is that the sub-headings allow the reader to take a break. The book is funny at times and the story has been garnished with a lot of trivia and there are two flowcharts for understanding certain situations. The story has been written like a screenplay with even the sub-headings and the names of the chapters are like names of scenes. A bit too long, the story could have been a little shorter and still the spice would have stayed.

The third book by Sundari Venkatraman is a romantic story,Meghna It is the story of a 22 year old girl set mostly in Mumbai. I had just purchased the book from Amazon and was having a problem downloading it when the author asked me if I would like to review her book and agreed to send me a pdf of the book. Thank you so much Sundari ji for the book and a pdf means that I can read it any time I want. The book starts with a prologue when Meghna’s mother dies and Rahul moves to London and moves into present when Meghna has just had a tiff with Rahul immediately after he has popped the question and has gone to Dubai and her plane has been hijacked. The rest of the story is in a flashback till it comes back to the present and moves forward from there.

The Blurb:

The young and dashing Rahul Sinha lives in England with his parents, Shyam and Rajni. He is an only son of the rich banker. Rahul is totally attached to his father but does not care for his mother. Read the book to find out why….
Rahul is exulted with his efforts at work paying off and plans a holiday with his best friend Sanjay Srivastav who lives in Mumbai with his wife Reema, kids Sanya and Rehaan and most importantly, his sister, Meghna. Rahul recalls meeting Meghna just before they parted six years ago.
Meghna works for a website and also teaches modern dance as she loves it. She’s thrown for a toss when Rahul comes visiting. She had thought he had forgotten them.
But how could Rahul do that? Sanjay’s his best friend and Rahul had always treated their home as his own. Sanjay’s mother had been more of a mother to Rahul than his own. Rahul had stayed away after moving to England or so Meghna believes.
Thus begins the story between Rahul and Meghna, the teasing, the flirting, the anger, the tears… …will they find love?(

The characters:

Meghna Srivastav, 22, stays in Mumbai with her brother and his family. Having lost her father when she was two and her mother at sixteen, she is very close to her brother, Sanjay, an airline pilot, and sister-in-law, Reema. She is independent, works as a copywriter for a website, teaches dance with her partner Prashant and rides a motorbike. She dotes on her four year old niece, Sasha and two year old nephew, Rehaan.

Rahul Sinha, 30, moved to London after completing his CA in Mumbai when he was 24 and joined his father’s bank. Now, he is a Director. He is very close to his father but not his mother. He and Sanjay have been friends since school days and Sanjay’s mother, whom he calls Mamma, practically brought him up.

The story:

Rahul gets promoted as a director and decides to come to India to spend time with his best friend, Sanjay. Meghna is surprised to see Rahul in her home when he drops in after six years. She has had a crush on him since she was sixteen and her family knows about it. Rahul’s feelings for Meghna are powerful but he does not know whether they are enough for lifelong commitment. So, he wants to get to know her better and goes with her everywhere. He proposes to her with all the works and she accepts happily.

But Prashant is in love with Meghna and then there is Aisha, Rahul’s self-proclaimed fiancée from London waiting for him at Sanjay’s flat. Meghna runs away, takes a flight to Dubai, the flight is hijacked. Will they find each other again?

My take:

As with all Sundari Venkatraman books, the plot is simple, the story is sweet and the characters loveable. Meghna’s family is a typical Indian middle class close knit family with a brother, bhabhi and kids. The easy camaraderie between the charaters has been beautifully depicted. The relationship of Sasha and Rehaan has been depicted very well. I could visualize the story. The author has described the feeling of both the protagonists making the book all the more interesting.